A Healthy Respect for Noise

As has become my routine this time of year (and throughout the summer months) I came inside from the yard work Saturday at or around noon to have a helluva ham sandwich and a blissful bit of Metal Mania on VH1Classic.  If you are not familiar with this programming, (1) you should be ashamed, (2) if you’re my age – give or take a few years either way – you should be really ashamed.  Herein lies a veritable gold mine of music that MTV once broadcast when the “M” actually stood for music.  Sure, what you see on MM wasn’t typically aired until after midnight but it was a permanent part of their playlist and remains in heavy rotation on the infinitely looped soundtrack of my misspent youth.

Much to my initial chagrin Metal Mania wasn’t on.  In its place was Episode #1 of Metal Evolution.  I had watched Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey a while back and had agreed with most everyone that the only problem with the film was its brevity – after all, you can never really talk about Heavy Metal long enough can you?  As a nod to that near universal sentiment, the creators elaborated on the “Heavy Metal Family Tree” they had presented and blessed us with what we’ve all (at least those like me) have been waiting for since 1989…”they used the 26-subgenre chart as a "road map…host/producer and metal-head turned anthropologist Sam Dunn, crisscrossed the globe exploring the vast history of heavy metal across its 40+ year history and beyond."   

Seriously?  Two of my greatest loves – Heavy Metal and documentary film – coming together in one glorious union?  (Had they managed to squeeze some Lou Kahn or Carlo Scarpa in there, the trivecta would have been complete!)  The planets had aligned and what was once the successful commencement of a very industrious Saturday quickly devolved into a self-indulgent orgy of PBR-infused, fist-pumping, devil-horn flashing celebration of the music that meant so much to me as a maniacal adolescent.  If you weren’t there, everything that I’ve said thus far and most everything I’m about to say will mean very little to you and possibly only serve to solidify my station as a moron in your eyes.  So be it – my condolences.

Alice Cooper to Yngwie Malmsteen and all points in between, an absolute unabashed carnival of Heavy Metal from its very primal genesis through the bastardization of purity that it has become today.  Finally, somebody had the balls to say it proud and out loud and give it the proper attention it deserves – to grant it, by virtue of investigation, the status it warrants in the immeasurable lexicon of popular music.  Past that: to bestow upon it the tribute of (un)holy coronation it has earned through lifetimes of struggle and sacrifice and to render it viable, if only to itself and its adherents.   As it turns out, I’m not the only one who sees it and hears and feels it still.  Finally.

So the tasks I had outlined for myself were neglected – completely forgotten actually.  Not only my “plan” for the day but effectively everything that my Saturday was capable of failed miserably.  I must confess that I didn’t even watch the Final Four due to the magnetic pull by which I was captured: transfixed, powerless to look away from the outstanding decadent spectacle of excess bounding haphazardly from pixel to ill-prepared pixel along the slick surface of my unimpressive television.

In life, I think that one has to occasionally allow the selfish luxury of sitting still long enough to recognize and appreciate the simple (if sometimes foolish) joy of their past or present.  For me, I can’t think of a more productive way to spend (11) unproductive hours of a perfectly beautiful I should be outside enjoying this weather day than I did with Metal Evolution this weekend.  Some call this music "noise" – I call it necessary.  Some have their morning coffee: I have my mandatory Metallica.

The thought occurred to me as I reveled in my nirvanic state, that in these (40) years, I’ve never met a girl who could sit idly by and allow such an indulgence and I’ve certainly never met a girl who could understand and appreciate the gravity of how and what that music makes me feel and remember, much less one who has shared those feelings. (“If I ever find me a girl like that, I’d kick off my shoes and dance on my hat…”)

I’m sure this fact is the progenitor from which all relationship stumblings in my life have been born.  It couldn’t possibly be my extreme idiosyncratic behavioral obsessions or my ever increasing disdain for human beings or the height of the elitist intellectual tower upon which I reside or the freakish random paranoia of my thought process or the rigidity of my stubborn belief in "my way".  No.  It couldn’t be any of that…it must be the music.  Right?  I’m sure that’s what it is. [sarcasm]

Either way, note to self: My next ex must have a healthy respect for "noise" as I do.

 

Keep Music Evil.